


From the Outside

by Disenchantress



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Feels, Canon Compliant, F/M, Feels, Gen, Grey Wardens, Letters, Mutual Pining, POV Alistair, POV First Person, POV Multiple, POV Surana, Post-Break Up, Separations, The Calling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 07:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17402258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disenchantress/pseuds/Disenchantress
Summary: When Naeva Surana made Alistair King of Ferelden, she didn't expect that to mean what they had between them would end. Or never thought of it, perhaps. And she makes it nearly ten years trying to think of it as little as possible, until every Warden in Vigil's Keep begins to hear the Calling and she can't ignore the possibility that the King of Ferelden might be, too.Alistair, on the other hand, has always been one to wallow in his mistakes, and sending away the love of his life is certainly no exception. When he begins to hear the Calling nearly a decade before he expected to, he assumes it's his penance for what he's done to Naeva and the dark ritual that spared their lives. But before he goes to the Deep Roads, there's one last apology he has to make.AKA my version of why King Alistair isn't even remotely worried about the darkspawn magister singing in his head in Inquisition.





	From the Outside

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is something I left unfinished for approximately four years after, during my first playthrough of Inquisition, Hello by Adele happened to come on at the same time I was wondering why King Alistair didn't seem at all concerned by the fake Calling. Thus an angsty plot bunny where my Surana, who's still in love with him after ten years whether she admits it to herself or not, can't set out to search for the cure without making sure Alistair isn't running away into the Deep Roads first.

I must have sat down and tried to write to him a thousand times.

Normally, I’m good enough with words. I managed to marshal an army to end the Blight, after all; I can’t be too awful at speaking. But every time I tried to write, the quill hovered over the paper and dripped ink blots until I crumpled it up and threw it into the campfire, defeated.

Apparently saving the world just isn’t in the same league as telling the man you fell in love with that even after you made him king and he said you couldn’t be together anymore, you still love the bastard.

After a while, I gave up on trying to write. I almost visited a few times, thinking perhaps my brand of eloquence only worked in person. I made it all the way to Denerim once before I found my courage lacking and turned in to see the smith that had made us dragonscale armor instead. He was disappointed I had no more dragon scales. I was just disappointed in myself.

Maybe I hid my struggle from the Grey Wardens I led, but I can’t say for sure. Certainly, none of them ever called me on it. I missed nights in camp with Leliana and Zevran, who had always had such talents for reading me and saying precisely the right thing—or in Zevran’s case, just the wrong thing phrased so that it would make me laugh instead of cry. I refused to admit it wasn’t really Leliana _or_ Zevran I wanted to talk to about everything.

I tried simply putting Alistair Theirin out of my mind. Sometimes it almost worked, when no one happened to be discussing the king. Much more often, it did not. In one particularly dark fit of drunken anger, I had even spent a night with Zevran before he left for Antiva. I think he knew why I’d done it; afterward, he stroked my hair softly while I cried, but was gone by the time I awoke.

It was over a year after the Archdemon fell before I finally saw Alistair again. My new comrades and I had put an end to the machinations of the Mother and the Architect alike, and the king was attending a ceremony to officially dedicate the arling of Amaranthine to the Grey Wardens. For a while, I avoided his gaze. When I finally looked at him, I met his eyes and had never before seen regret so thick in them.

The anger I had so carefully fought down flared again, and I made a snide and rather loud comment to Anders. It gave me a savage sort of pleasure when Alistair’s neck and ears turned bright red.

My fury lasted until I found an empty room at the new Warden headquarters, slammed the door, and collapsed against it, sobbing.

I wished I had died slaying the Archdemon.

But I couldn’t—duty that cannot be forsworn, I reminded myself, the words ringing bitterly in my mind in a voice I could never hope to forget. And there was a long list of duties. A keep and a city to reinforce and defend. Missives and visitors from Weisshaupt to evade. Fereldan _and_ Orlesian nobles to placate. An entire fortress of Grey Wardens to convince an elven mage really could lead them. And the exhausting task of coordinating it all, every day, for years.

On the worst days, I missed the Blight—roaming the country with friends instead of subordinates, before the Landsmeet and the choices that had changed the world forever. On the best, I lost myself in the routine and forgot I had ever existed outside of the Wardens.

I was almost relieved when I began to hear the song. It seemed years too early, from what I had been told after my Joining, but had I not already cheated a Warden’s death once? Perhaps death was simply tired of waiting for me. Then I summoned my constables to deliver the news and realized the entire order was hearing it, too. I nearly broke down when a frightened mage who had only taken her Joining the month before asked me if she was just too weak to be a Warden after all.

And yet for some damned reason, even before letters to Weisshaupt went unanswered and we realized we were alone, I thought of Alistair Theirin. In the palace in Denerim, was he hearing the Calling too? Was he getting his affairs in order, deciding who to support in the Landsmeet as the next king, preparing a trek into the Deep Roads, _not knowing_?

Andraste’s flaming ass, I would have to finally, _actually_ write him.

It was no easier than it had been any of the previous attempts, but I did it because I had to. _Not_ because I still cared about him. Not that, at all. Only because I couldn’t remember how to talk to the bastard without a lot of emotions in that air that I didn’t have time to waste dealing with. Somehow they crept in at the end anyway, but with dawn and my departure looming, I gave it to the runner as it was and tried not to imagine how it might sound read aloud.

I chose one of the senior Wardens, Stroud, to defend the keep and the Grey in my absence. If word arrived from Weisshaupt while I was gone, I told him, defer to the message. If not, keep the men calm and the city unaware, and I would return with a cure or I would not return.

I didn’t expect the royal messenger waiting for me at the city gates, but I accepted the missive with shaking hands. My title and name were written on the outside, clear and without room for misinterpretation, but still I hesitated before breaking the seal. There hadn’t been time yet for him to have received my letter, never mind to have responded; if this was a letter saying he was leaving for his Calling, it would mean mine was too late.

> _Naeva,_
> 
> _Ignore the official messenger; this isn’t a letter from the King of Ferelden to the Commander of the Grey. It’s a letter from me to you, and long since overdue._
> 
> _I began_ _hearing_ _something a couple of weeks ago, a humming so quiet I thought it was just some song stuck in my head, but it’s only grown louder the harder I try to ignore it. I know it should be too soon for my Calling, but I know that’s what it is as surely as I know a hurlock from a genlock at ninety yards. It’s no less than I deserve, and after all the rules we broke during the Blight, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised the horde takes offense that I haven’t bothered trying to murder them for so long._
> 
> _I’ve only spoken with Eamon so far, but we’ll work something out shortly. Once we have a plan, we’ll tell the people, but I didn’t want you to find out from some generic announcement. That just felt wrong. But I’m sure everyone else will hear soon, and Anora can feel all smug in her tower, knowing she was right and there was no point having me on the throne at all. I guess that’s just another thing we got wrong._
> 
> _But the only thing I regret is how I left things between us. Naeva, I’m so sorry for what I said to you. I’m sorry I panicked and called it off in front of everyone just when you needed me as much as I needed you. I’m sorry I listened to Eamon and was too afraid to fight for you. I’m sorry I didn’t just tell the nobles to stow it, that I loved you and will always love you, and that they would be lucky to have an elven mage for a queen if that woman was you. Most of all, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long and my own death looming over my head to make me stop being such an idiot. You are and always will be the only woman I’ve ever loved, but here I am, only brave enough to say it when I have nothing left to lose._
> 
> _I know it’s far too late to say any of this, and I know you’ll probably never forgive me. I wouldn’t forgive me either. But if I’m only going to have one more chance to say it, I wanted to tell you again what a rare and beautiful thing you are amidst the darkness, and that when the time comes, my last thoughts will be of you._
> 
> _—Alistair_

My eyes and heart burned as I read, but I folded it again carefully and tucked it away out of sight. On the voyage across the Waking Sea, I lost count of the number of times I opened it to read it again, trying to number and quantify all of the things it made me feel.

And now, staring up at the mountains of the Anderfels spreading out snowy and foreboding before me, it’s still the first thought in my mind. I pat the pouch under my breastplate, checking that the letter bearing the royal seal is still there. It’s like a warmth against my chest from the biting cold, the only thing keeping the song in my head from driving me mad.

Perhaps, when this is over and my mission is complete and the Wardens are saved, I will finally return to Denerim to deliver the cure to the king of Ferelden in person. But only that.

Perhaps.

* * *

I must have written her a thousand letters.

At first, I was convinced I would find the right combination of words to say what I needed to tell her, so I kept trying. The stack of finished but unsendable missives grew but I kept them, copying parts from this version or that into a fresh message, so sure that eventually I would stumble on the right combination of words to apologize.

Apparently I have more talent now in dealing with whining lords than writing to the woman I spent hours talking and laughing with every night.

Eventually, I admitted to myself I would never send any of these letters and they turned into something more akin to a journal. I would write to her, carefully script her name at the top of the page, and then recount a particularly frustrating day or go over exactly when I first knew I loved her. I told myself it helped a little. It really, really didn’t.

The papers began to pile up, but like a child, I continued to hide them from the maids and Eamon. I stashed them under the drawers of my desk, beneath loose floorboards, one even inside a crack in the oaken headboard of my bed. I wished I had one she had written me to place there instead.

I tried to just _not_ think of Naeva Surana, I really did. Eamon and Teagan avoided mentioning the new Warden Commander, and even went so far as trying to tempt my heart away with various pretty, empty-headed noble ladies. I tried to make small talk for their benefit, but found I failed even at that. After one girl was stupid enough to lunge in and kiss me and it took Eamon a solid hour to talk me down, they gave up on that particular line of attack.

It had been a year before I finally saw Naeva again. She had worked another miracle, defending Amaranthine from some kind of darkspawn conflict, this time without me by her side. She had let her hair grow again, and I remembered with a flash the ogre that had picked her up by the long white mane she had worn loose since the Circle, the flash of black blood as I drove my sword through its heart for daring to touch her, and how she had cut her hair to short braids in camp that night. It was loose and down to her shoulders again; I despaired that perhaps she had come to trust someone else to keep her safe from ogre attacks.

She caught me staring and made a pointed aside to the blond mage standing by her about the untrustworthiness of templars. He snorted and she smirked and I left rather quickly after that.

I retreated to my chambers in the castle and ripped all the letters I had written from their hiding places in a rage, but then found myself just staring at them when I went to hurl them into the fire.

I smoothed them back out carefully and wished I had died with the Archdemon.

But that would have been too easy—a slow death by paperwork and an even slower descent into madness from dealing with bureaucracy was, after all, a much more fitting end for someone that had betrayed every oath he ever made. The vows to the Chantry that I never took, the ones to the Wardens that I threw away, and the ones to Naeva that I cast aside in a moment of stupidity I could never correct because _kings cannot be selfish, Alistair,_ mocked Eamon’s voice from the shadows of my mind every time I thought of her.

On my best days, I could completely lose myself in the mundane…ity of it all, becoming that boring shell of good king Alistair that everyone—or at least Eamon—so wanted me to be. On my worst, I couldn’t tear my mind from the Blight and friends and love and freedom and all the other things I would never have again, and no amount of clever puns or witty one-liners could disguise it.

Then one day, I woke with a song in my ears that I had thought not to hear for another decade. It was the price for the ritual, I thought immediately, for whatever dark magic that had saved Naeva from the archdemon’s soul. I found a strange peace in the idea. It wasn’t such a terrible thing, that the Calling might have come for me early, if that was the price for her life. I certainly owed it to her a dozen times over.

And even through the task of meeting with Eamon, of explaining to him that he was going to have to find a new king because the old one had to go die in the Deep Roads, Naeva was really all I thought of. The years I’d gone without speaking to her, of writing to her like a diary to keep me sane but never actually giving her the apology she deserved for how childish and thoughtless I was— _even when she still found a way to save us both_ —it was all much too heavy a weight to carry into that last fight with the darkspawn.

So while Eamon panicked and tried to work out what to do for Ferelden, I finally wrote a letter I intended to send.

It was so much easier this time. Maybe it was the years of practice, making it feel like I still knew how to talk to her, or maybe it was just knowing that I had literally nothing left to lose. I hoped she would understand when she read it that it wasn’t some pathetic attempt to redeem myself. I hoped she would know she deserved an apology long ago, and I was just too afraid of how much it would hurt _me_ to give it to her.

I wrote that I loved her, wrote it for her to actually read, for the first time in ten years. I knew she wouldn’t feel the same, but it didn’t matter. I simply wanted her to know how special she was, and how much of a coward and a fool I was for sending her away. Dying men are allowed to be sentimental.

Imagine my surprise when, the very next day after I sent a messenger to Vigil’s Keep, a runner with a letter bearing griffon heraldry appeared in my study. My runner would certainly have had time to make it to Amaranthine, but definitely not back, and this was a very different man. Did Naeva know, somehow? Was there a way for the Commander of the Grey to tell which Wardens were nearing their Callings? When I ripped open the letter, I was met with my full and glaringly ostentatious title, and only became more confused as I read.

> _His Majesty, King Alistair Theirin—_
> 
> _This letter is to inform you that, if you are currently experiencing any adverse effects from your association with the Grey Wardens, to immediately disregard it for the time being. Consider this a direct order from the Warden-Commander of Ferelden, if you must._
> 
> _This is_ _not_ _your Calling, and you are_ _not_ _the only one hearing it. I thought the same when I woke with the song in my mind, but every Warden save the very newest recruits have begun to hear it at once. It is unnatural, perhaps a deliberate play by the horde hive mind to trick us. And if it isn’t, it’s likely in response to something that happened during the Blight. In either case, there will be a way to reverse it, and that is what I plan to do._
> 
> _I say “plan,” as if I have one, but those for me have always been the loosest of things, as I’m sure you remember. All word from Weisshaupt has come to a halt, and if the brass will not save us, I will find a way. The work Avernus did on extracting power from the taint, the Wilds flower that kennelmaster at Ostagar used to save Firion, whatever it was that removed the taint from the Orlesian First Enchanter Fiona—the ingredients for a cure_ _are_ _out there, just as the way to survive slaying an Archdemon was, and I will not rest until I find them. For all of our sakes. And if this is my fault for a poor decision made trying to save Ferelden, well, I will accept the consequences of that, but I will do whatever I can to keep_ ~~_you_~~ _t_ _he rest of the Wardens from paying that price._
> 
> _I did not mean to imply that my reasoning for this has to do with you specifically, though of course, curing this affliction would benefit Ferelden if it no longer has to fear losing its king. That is why I’ve written, after all, to ensure you don’t do anything rash while I find a solution. There is no personal reason, as you made abundantly clear many years ago. I only wish to see to your safety as my former comrade at arms and as_ ~~ _my_~~ _the king._
> 
> _It is far too late to make amends, but if I don’t return from this task, know that I never meant what I said that day in Amaranthine. I felt angry and betrayed when the entire situation was of my own making, and in most things, I would still trust you above all others. That is, in the end, why I made you king and created this mess. I am sorry, and should have told you ten years ago, for making that decision for you. Perhaps if there is a cure to be found, I will yet find a way to make it up to you.  
>  _
> 
> _Until then,_
> 
> _Warden-Commander Naeva Surana_

To say that the letter _worried me_ would be an understatement. It left me terrified for her, for the Wardens, for what this could mean if and when another archdemon arose. It made my heart ache in a fresh way, to read between the lines and know that my ill thought out words all those years ago still hurt her, and it made me hope my letter had reached her before she left, because if she was going to risk her life for a hopeless cause again, she deserved to do it knowing none of what she was trying to blame herself for was her own fault.

I watch the Amaranthine ocean every morning now, praying for a ship with a griffon on its sails. Praying for Naeva, wherever she is, to be safe and whole and dealing better with this song in her head than I am. Sometimes it’s almost enough to drive me mad, and when it nearly does, I pull the letter with her signature from the crack in the headboard of my bed and read it over again.

It reminds me she’s alive, and she’s searching, and even though it’s an impossible task, she’s worked the impossible before. I don’t have faith in much anymore, but I have to believe she can do the impossible again.

And maybe when she’s done, she’ll even find a way to forgive me.

**Author's Note:**

> ... And yup, I know Awakening canon has Alistair meeting the Warden-Commander in Amaranthine at the beginning regardless, but... you can't tell me he'd be that cavalier with someone whose heart he'd just broken a few months before. I reject this canon and substitute my own.


End file.
